


Delivered Fresh to Your Door

by MajorEnglishEsquire, outpastthemoat



Series: NOODLE SHOP 'verse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Chinese Food, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2021-01-13 23:00:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21240791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire, https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: Follows up NOODLE SHOP.Sam’s been inside Chuck’s apartment exactly three times. He got to share a sixer with him out on the front stoop after helping him move the last of his boxes in, the first day he was here, years ago.A month later, he also came up to help him out to the car, twice, after he got mugged and he was limping around for a couple weeks.It was the second time he came here that he fell in love with Chuck.





	Delivered Fresh to Your Door

Sam’s been inside Chuck’s apartment exactly three times. He got to share a sixer with him out on the front stoop after helping him move the last of his boxes in, the first day he was here, years ago.

A month later, he also came up to help him out to the car, twice, after he got mugged and he was limping around for a couple weeks.

It was the second time he came here that he fell in love with Chuck.

Sam hadn’t seen all his stuff moved in and spread out until then. Everything was clean and spare and had function—except for Chuck’s writing desk, where wild things burst outside the bounds of their hanging pots in the sun-drenched corner, beside the window.

He knocked and Chuck called to tell him to come in. He did and he saw Chuck at the desk, glasses on, face illuminated by the computer monitor and setting sun. “Just one minute,” he said.

So Sam waited. And Chuck finished his words, saved his document. And turned.

He was bruised, head-to-toe from what Sam could see. It stole his breath. Seeing him there with the harsh reality of his near-empty apartment, framed by the light of his computer and the activity and life of his writing space, Sam suddenly felt so much click into place about Chuck. He had breathed a curse and helped Chuck get his shoes and escorted him down to the sidewalk so he could pull the car close. Chuck asked him to come up the next week, too, but never again. He always waited on a corner where Sam could stop with the traffic.

It’s busy today so it’s hard to find a spot. He has to walk back half a block from where he parked. And Chuck is waiting on the front stoop looking nervous.

Sam has actually pictured this, you know? Cheesy shit like stopping in the middle of the meal one day and asking, “Can we just call this a date?” Or surprising him on a not-Thursday and showing up with grocery bags to make him a home-cooked meal. Not that he knows how to fucking cook.

He’s picturing himself getting to the fourth step and Chuck standing to come even to him, for once, and leaning in until Chuck just greets him, kisses him.

Chuck does stand, all nervous energy, shoving his hands in his pockets. But Sam gets to the sixth step and all the way to the top and Chuck just. Stares. Like he’s frightened.

“Hey,” Sam tries.

“Hey. We’re waiting for a delivery.”

“Okay,” Sam shrugs.

A few cars pass on the street. A woman walks two dogs by and when she turns the corner there’s a sudden illusion that they’re alone on the entire block. A hush of far-away noise but nothing close.

Chuck shrinks into his shoulders a bit more. “Listen. Sam. We don’t. We don’t have to do this. I—if I made you uncomfortable with the post-”

“You didn’t.” It’s still silent. So he puts his hands in his pockets, too. “Um.” It sounds like his every breath is echoing off the brick and pavement. Everyone inside already, winding down and eating with their families. Two souls on this one entire block. “I’m in love with you,” his voice is unexpectedly thin and fragile and his throat burns.

Chuck’s eyes go wide by slow degrees.

Eventually a car passes.

“I’m broke. I’m broke and I can’t get a job since I’ve got no real experience.” Chuck pulls his hand from his pocket to count off on his fingers. “I’m broke, unemployed, have no employable skills, my shoes stink so they live out on the fire escape, and I’m-” he breathes deep. “I’m lonely. All the time. Thursdays were one of the only things I had to look forward to, and if I’m not a good enough k-kisser,” he blinks wide, “or partner or not attentive enough or—or who you need at all, then I just lost myself that by making another stupid, emotional blog post.”

“Another??” Sam busts out because he can’t help it.

Chuck clamps his eyes shut and almost smacks himself in the head. Sam catches his wrist and doesn’t let him. Lets go. Adjusts the strap of his bag across himself.

“Don’t delete them,” Sam says, knowing he’ll do it anyway.

“I don’t think you understand what a loser I am,” Chuck insists, looking anywhere but at Sam.

“Take your cookie’s advice,” he insists.

“It wasn’t my cookie. It was the other one I got off the other table.

“So if I’d have picked that one when you held both fortunes out to me, I would have thought it was futile and the world was ending because I hadn’t told you. That I love you. That I’ve loved you for a while.”

“Jesus,” Chuck breathes.

“You don’t have to be in love with me if that’s the issue. I know it’s unfair to-” but he doesn’t finish because Chuck’s just laughing in the most _I’m utterly fucked_ way, shaking his head.

They stay quiet again. Quiet for five whole minutes in which Sam is basically desperate to say _everything_.

“We can wait inside,” Sam says, when it feels almost awkward and public.

Chuck rattles a little and turns to key in and hold the door for him.

They get into his apartment and Sam shuts the door and wonders if he’s gonna regret all this come Thursday, when he’s empty of company, knowing their seats at Noodle Shop are taken up by others and that he won’t be able to stand going inside the place ever again.

He can let Chuck off the hook.

Sam is the one who pressed the point. Chuck was just going to deal with it silently. Not let it change them.

Nevermind how that almost makes Sam angry.

He loves change and he loves growing. The same Chinese joint every week is one thing, but stifling how he really feels just to spare the possible pain of change? How can he live like that?

He adjusts the strap of the bag again and turns to, like, maybe ask. Ask what’s so petrifying about just _trying_.

Chuck is there when he turns. Comes to tug at the strap, “You can put this down on the table.”

“Are you not okay with this?”

He freezes. “I just don’t think you understand that this... isn’t- I’m not-” he doesn’t seem to have the words.

“Try?” Sam whispers.

Chuck looks at his bag again so Sam takes it off and hands it over. Chuck takes it to the couch and comes back.

He comes close and he looks up and Sam _wants to _because he has _wanted him _for a while. He frames Chuck’s face with his hands and touches.

Maybe it’s too big a distance to jump. From weekly dinners to _I’m in love with you_.

And maybe not. Considering the way Chuck looks so hopeful and shuffles close, fingers snagging Sam’s shirt.

Sam does it. He needs to be the one to banish the doubt from Chuck’s body. Needs to feel him close and trusting him. _Trying_.

Chuck opens for him and closes his fists in Sam’s nice interview shirt. Before he even knows it, they’ve turned and pressed against the wall together and Sam’s moaning into somebody else’s mouth.

It’s not anything like he thought. He hadn’t been giving them enough credit.

They’re very fucking good at this.

God, Chuck pulls Sam closer and closer. He just lets Sam _have him_. No hesitation.

Sam skids his hands down to loop his arms around him, hold Chuck tight to himself. Chuck pulls back only a little to nip at his bottom lip, nuzzle at him, and shudder out a breath.

“Okay?” Sam asks against his mouth.

“I don’t want you to stop liking me when you realize I’ve done nothing with my life since graduation.”

A laugh breaks out of him. “I’ve known you since before then. It isn’t like you haven’t been trying. Maybe you just need someone to lean on to make things easier. Lean on me, huh?”

“I’m so screwed,” he whispers. “I love you. I don’t wanna disappoint you.”

Sam goes warm and he smiles and he’s just too fucking thrilled. “Give yourself a goddamn chance,” he just leans in all the way to hug Chuck’s unfamiliar shape close. Sam wants to know him like this. Close and firm. Soft at the junction of his neck and shoulder. Clean smell of him and _such_ a familiar voice. “Glad you’re crushing on me, too. You made it a lot easier.”

Chuck groans like a whine and conks his head into Sam’s shoulder. “God, you’re a hugger. I’ve seen you hanging all off your friends and I never got there. I don’t have people like that. I’m so.” He doesn’t finish, but the end of the sentence is _lonely_.

Sam hugs him tighter. “You can have company any time. Call me. Let me in. Talk to me. I’m here. Can I kiss you again?”

Chuck nods into his shoulder and this time it’s desperate. Hot and clinging. Sam directing Chuck’s head in his palms, Chuck’s hands at his wrists and touching him so sweetly while Sam basically plunders him.

He’s gotta calm down. He’s just... excited. So ready. He wants to make this work. Chuck is brilliant and he needs people and Sam can be his people. He’ll worry less and write more and he’ll know he isn’t alone. And Sam can have someone who doesn’t fly away. Since graduation, all his friends have been finding amazing jobs and moving away, to different cities, different states. Not that Chuck will never find an amazing job and have to go, but he’s been in town since Sam was a sophomore and they’ve been having dinner every week for five fucking years. When Sam couldn’t afford to fly back to Kansas after the school year ended, had to stay and do summer courses and work two jobs, Chuck was still here. Still helping him with essays on Thursdays and calming him down for exams on Tuesdays and. He’s just been so far-away, otherwise. So quiet, like he didn’t wanna take up space or time and Sam didn’t know how—

Didn’t know if he was straight or not, quite frankly. And didn’t know how hard he could pry before Chuck shut him out.

Sam presses Chuck into the wall and feels his hands skid up his shoulders, up his neck, into his hair and if Chuck starts carding through it, playing with it, tugging it? He’s gonna have a harder time calming down. His body won’t listen to him. He’s gonna start pressing thick against Chuck’s hip.

Sam’s breathing speeds up and he has to pull away some, eyes closed, panting. Chuck kisses his lips again, light, and just as he sinks his fingers to Sam’s scalp the buzzer goes.

Chuck tugs, anyway, and Sam gasps, hand running across the wall for the panel. He hits the button.

“Mf- hello?” Chuck manages.

“Yeah, delivery? 6A?”

They have to break apart and get their food.

Both of them are near enough to broke, but Sam comes up with most of the cash and only uses Chuck’s for the tip.

Sam corners him again and they’re back to sucking face after they’ve closed the door and set the bag on the table.

Sam has to pull Chuck’s hands back down to his chest when he goes for his hair again. “Unless you’re not gonna be hungry for a while,” he says between kisses.

He shouldn’t have tipped his cards like that. Chuck’s eyes spark and Sam can see him about to take it as a dare. He laughs and stops and hugs him and Chuck hugs him, too, tight and trembling. Still so sure he’s gonna be outed as some kind of huge fuck-up.

Wait. Shit.

“You’re worried about being outed—like _outed_,” Sam suddenly realizes.

Chuck cringes. Drops his eyes. Lets go and heads to the table.

Jesus. He wants to tell him not to. He shouldn’t be worried about something so silly. But. There are a million reasons people are scared to be out. He can’t live with this as a secret. Sam just... can’t. He’s done feeling weird about it. He dropped the whole group of friends he started off college with because they were frat-boy-jock types and he didn’t wanna have to endure the slurs, the possibility for harassment if they found out. He was up-front with everyone after freshman year.

Including Chuck.

He comes to kneel next to the old coffee table and stops Chuck’s hands as he’s opening boxes.

“Why?” Sam needs to know.

Chuck pauses. Doesn’t meet his eyes. “I’ve already been-.” He stops. Sits on the couch. “It wasn’t _just_ a mugging,” he finally admits.

It happened right after Chuck moved in here.

He’s been alone. He had to endure that—however bad it actually was—alone. And friendless. He let Sam into his home to help him out just twice. _Only twice_.

He’s needed more this whole time. He’s needed help. He didn’t _say _anything about being attacked. Other than that it hurt and he needed something to lean on to get as far as the car.

He didn’t say anything when he fell in love with Sam.

To be fair, Sam hadn’t said anything, either.

But he didn’t say anything when Sam told him he wasn’t straight. He didn’t say, “Hey, me too.”

It didn’t come up until after Chuck moved off campus.

Sam’s putting the pieces together. “You’re just trying not to get jumped again.”

Chuck is silent. Only nods.

Sam blows out a breath. “So it’s not that you never wanna be seen that way. Or that you would feel ashamed if-”

“No.” He’s solid and definite about that.

Oh thank fuck. “So when I prove that I’m capable of protecting you, and that you don’t have to be on your own anymore, maybe you’ll be more comfortable with us?”

Chuck cracks a grin. “You don’t have to _protect _me,” he says, like he feels weird about it.

“I’ll be doing it anyway. You’re not on your own. You weren’t before. I thought you liked your whole lone ranger routine more, or I would have—I didn’t even know if we could be full-time friends,” Sam shrugs.

Chuck is pointedly quiet. Snags the receipt off the bag and balls it up. Rolls it in his hands. “I don’t want to be a burden to you, Sam. I didn’t want you to help me when—I mean, they got my wallet. I’m still fighting the fucking bank on the identity theft bullshit, years later, and—I just. I work retail when I can find a gig and I write in my spare time. I’m at rock-bottom. I’m not moving forward. Sam, I’m not the best—I’m-”

“First of all stop trying to tell me how you’re protecting me from yourself because the more of this you drop on me, the more I realize you were spending our time together just working on my essays, helping me however you could, and not telling me how _I _could have helped _you_. You didn’t give me a chance to try to do anything for you.”

“Sam, you’ve been in school!! You’re going places!!”

Fuck this.

Sam stands up and moves to the couch, wedges in next to him and doesn’t let him move to the other end, instead. He turns Chuck’s face and kisses him. “I’m gonna be a lawyer. I’ll help you with the identity theft. I’m gonna make money. I’ll help you with being broke.”

Chuck starts to protest so Sam kisses him again.

“I’m bigger than, like, most people. Let me come over more often and you’ll be safer. Chuck. I can do this. I wouldn’t have made it through my professional writing class and that horrible speech class and all those research courses if it weren’t for you. You just-” he stops and kisses Chuck again. “You feel amazing to me. I’m so ready for this. Let’s just try this together,” he pleads.

Chuck sighs a heavy breath and slumps against him.

“_Give this a chance,_” Sam begs, voice quiet against his hair before he kisses Chuck’s head.

“Should we leave the food in the toaster oven and have sex first?”

Sam laughs. “That was my last twenty bucks and I don’t have condoms.”

“None at all?”

“None _with me_.”

Chuck shrugs. Looks up at him. “I have some.”

Yeah. He thinks about it. But that was the last of his cash until the end of the week and he really is hungry. Sam wants him, yes. But he also doesn’t want the food going cold so they both go hungry. “I always thought we’d eat first, anyway.”

“How long have you-?”

“Chuck. Years.”

His eyes go wide again and Sam reaches to pull the fried rice over, hands it to him.

«»

They watch tv on Chuck’s laptop because they’re full and lazy and after explaining his failure at the interview, Sam isn’t ready to go through the drudgery of creating more cover letters.

He lays down across the couch, legs sprawling over the end, head in Chuck’s lap.

Chuck’s fingers go to his hair after a while. Sink in and card through it. Scritch at his head. Soft on his ear.

Sam can’t handle it forever. About a half hour in, this strangled noise chokes out of him.

Chuck soothes his neck and creeps back up after a while. Until Sam reaches to the coffee table, shuts the laptop, and they sit in the quiet. Chuck’s fingers keep going.

Sam is so so so sensitive to this stuff. Having his head touched, his hair played with, makes him utterly weak. He gets shivers in his belly.

Chuck strokes two nails down into his sideburn again and again and Sam finally yanks the hand down to kiss his palm. Chuck’s other hand starts working into his hair. Sam turns from his side to his back, gives up Chuck’s hand for his head. Pulls him down to kiss. One hand knots in his hair, the other travels down Sam’s throat to his chest. Chuck feels him. Pulls away to curse.

Sam moves to sit up and pull him close and make out with him a while. They become a knot on one end of the couch and Sam tries but he can’t control Chuck’s hands. He’s found his easy target and he just keeps going for it. Diving in and touching his head and grabbing a handful of hair and pulling just a little. Sam wants to feel his chest, gets a hand up under his shirt and finds him firm and fuzzy, just like his jaw and his arms. But Sam’s whole hand, when spanned wide, covers the majority of Chuck’s chest and he can push him back a little, pull his hand down his belly, and get at his belt.

There’s a desperate noise and Chuck falls away, scrabbles at his hand to yank the belt open himself. Gets the button and Sam can handle the rest. Pulls the zipper and dives a hand into Chuck’s jeans.

He throws his head back, gives a wordless shout. Sam feels him over his underwear. Feels him stiffen fast. Chuck kind of claws his hands into the couch and sits back to watch.

So Sam wants to watch, too.

He gets his knees under him on the cushions and straddles Chuck’s legs. Pauses to draw his clothes down, expose him. He is fuzzy here, too, and down his legs and his cock is a peachy-pink, generous and good in all ways. Sam kind of wants to taste him but it will be easier to find the right buttons if he sits here and strokes him the first time. So he does.

Chuck writhes under his hand but Sam can tell he needs more. So he sits forward and leans over him with the other hand. It gives Chuck his forearm to grip and when Sam comes close to kiss him, he makes little cries between. Sam gives him more.

So lots of kissing, then, while he’s being touched. When Sam first touched him, it seemed as if kissing had already gotten him half-way to hard. Kissing is a button.

Eventually it appears as if Sam finds another, thumbing firm down the underside, to his balls, and pumping from the root.

“Oh god,” Chuck says when he gets it really, really right. Can’t seem to control his volume and his half-empty apartment echoes. “More, oh, god, more.”

So Sam speeds his hand up and presses forward to kiss him-

But Chuck turns to free his mouth.

“More _with you. Please_.”

Sam laughs trying to free his other arm from Chuck’s grasp and open his slacks with the wrong hand. He isn’t hard to dig out one-handed, however. Chuck gasps and kind of... gurgles seeing him so that must be a good sign.

He does get help lining them both up. Chuck’s hands shake, opening the buttons on his shirt to throw it wide, get it out of the way, then Sam palms them both together and.

Can’t really tell you what else because _it works really well_. He grinds his cock and Chuck’s together and then he’s panting and riding on top of him and before it all comes to a very sudden and messy end, he knows that he _needs to _get up to kiss Chuck’s mouth for him. Chuck needs kisses to get off, he can tell.

And he’s right. Chuck’s hands fly back to his head and grab his hair and hold him close into the kiss and he shouts into Sam’s mouth. The feeling of him jerking and coming in Sam’s hand, pressed against his cock, makes him come too, while his hair is being used to hold him close for the sweetest fucking kisses he’s ever known.

They’ve both made a mess of Chuck’s belly and Sam’s hand and they’re teetering. The couch doesn’t seem deep or wide enough for this anymore, not with oxygen coming back. Sam can feel his right knee slipping off the cushion. He uses his clean hand to take Chuck’s neck and draw him into another sweet kiss, this one long and thankful. It feels like agreement. Like acceptance. So much so that he says, “I can sleep here?” without it really being a question.

Chuck’s hands are light on his face and Sam feels kind of _adored _by them. “Please,” Chuck nods.

“You wanna go now?”

“Should clean some stuff up, but,” he shrugs a little.

Yeah. Sam wants to touch him some more, too. “Show me where the bathroom is?”

They clean up and, after some hesitation, Chuck just strips to get into bed. The other rooms are as empty as the front. Only the bookshelf is overflowing and stacked with papers, figurines, _life_. Like the writing desk in the main room, some potted plants crawl outside the bounds of their planters and up the windowsill and across some of the books. Chuck keeps green things where he keeps his words.

Sam doesn’t take off his clothes until after he’s shut off the light in the main room and snagged the unopened fortune cookies off the table.

He tosses the cookies at the pillow and strips down, gets in. It’s not a big bed but he can pull Chuck close and wedge in under him and take up more space.

Having Chuck’s body naked against himself is that quiet, intimate kind of sexy that makes him want to sleep and wake up with somebody until it’s normal to lay there and watch him brush his teeth in the morning.

When he gathers Chuck’s hair, palming his head, his eyes slide closed and he cuddles himself closer, but it doesn’t seem to drive him nuts like it does Sam. Sam kisses him and doesn’t let up when he would normally relent. That’s what makes Chuck’s breath go short again.

He likes measuring these things; knowing these things.

He snags the wrapper of one of the cookies and hands it over.

“You first,” Chuck says. “We have to change your luck around from the interview. We can wake up and work on your resume at breakfast.”

Sam pulls Chuck’s leg over himself. “I think this changed my luck around already.”

“Open your cookie, though. For words of encouragement,” he grins.

So Sam does.

**Don’t pursue happiness - create it.**

“Wow. Yes. This exactly,” he agrees and shows it to Chuck.

“Oh wow. Yeah, that’s perfect. That’s exactly what we’ll do.” He looks to Sam’s eyes. “Promise. Okay?”

Sam kisses him. “What’s yours say?”

Chuck breaks his own open and Sam isn’t in the mood to eat the cookies so they set them aside on the nightstand. Chuck stares at his fortune looking dumbstruck. Almost teary-eyed.

He turns it for Sam to read.

**Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.**

Sam takes both little papers from Chuck’s hand and reaches to set them aside with the cookies. Pulls him in again and kisses his head.

“If I don’t hide us, you’ll really stay?” his voice shakes asking it.

“I would stay even if you weren’t comfortable being out, Chuck. I promise. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide. I want you to feel-”

“I’d rather an adventure than nothing. I’m so tired of nothing.”

Sam closes his eyes and kisses his head some more. Holds him close and tries to become familiar with the body under his hands. He recognizes it by sight but not like this. He wants that adventure. “You’ll never be nothing, I swear. You’ll always be something to me. You have been, since we met. And you’ve been more for a while. Let’s build on that, okay? We’ll create happiness. It’ll lead to adventures or something. Right now—right now I’m just excited I’m in love with someone. And that you are, too, and that the lucky guy on the other end of it is me.”

Chuck nearly keens into his skin. Presses into Sam’s neck and crawls the rest of the way into his arms.

Jobless and down to credit cards and with no more interviews lined up and with this soft, caring person in his arms, he smiles his way to sleep, glad to have this companion for the adventure of a lifetime. There’s a lot he doesn’t have right now, but it somehow feels as if he’s full up, both tangibles and intangibles. He can tell Chuck feels the same when, the next morning, he grabs Sam’s hand before they even get to the door, before they hit the street, and in full view of the world they’ve just teamed up against.


End file.
